Greenhorns
by Musafreen
Summary: Six warriors. Fifty themes.


**Author's Notes** : A fifty-themes thing which hopefully does not confuse people too much. The prompts used are lifted directly from one of the older ShadowPalace/Windowchild oneshot challenge topics in the Percy Jackson fandom.

**On the Story:** Six warriors. Fifty themes. No continuity whatsoever. Fluctuates throughout the timeline.

**

* * *

Animal **

About three times every day (ten, when she's helping out her parents), she wonders what it's be like- to be as quick as a raccoon, to fly like an eagle, to run like a horse. Then she finds out, and it's even better than she thought it'd be.

**Bell**

As the sound of the school bell cuts through his head like a Hork-Bajir blade, he wonders if six hours of combat and two hours of sleep is comparable to a hangover.

**Blind**

He hates nights, almost enough so he just wants to morph into something he's not; an owl would be so cool.

**Bowl**

He draws his hand back, concentrates, and lets the heavy ball fly out of his hand, then joins his Dad in hysterical laughter as the ball somehow bounces into the next lane.

**Burn**

The human tendency towards ambiguity in naming things is starting to annoy him. He still cannot understand why transferring data into portable circular devices is termed as burning, or why Marco has to laugh so much over such a likely misunderstanding.

**Crack**

Again and again he's visited by the same dream, again and again the sea seems stronger and the box seems smaller.

**Cycle**

Everytime she sees a caterpillar, she's visited by the horror of losing herself. Everytime she sees a butterfly, she remembers a little girl's smile.

**Deck**

"If I weren't an amazingly cute, crime-fighting savior of the world," he says, ignoring the glares of the Berenson cousins, "I would be a card shark."

**Door **

She hears the flap of rapidly beating wings, and wonders what her mother would say if she knew a guy ended up in her room practically every night.

**Hand**

He shows up red-faced and wondering if she'd go to the movies with him, but she'd already promised her Dad she'd clean up the barn. It doesn't turn out to be a complete loss, though, because he ends up helping her out and they manage to share a kiss underneath the rafters.

**Hide**

It was a good things humans were so slow and clumsy, or he'd have been spotted long ago. After all, blue against brown and green was hardly camouflage.

**Hold**

One of the things he really misses about his old body are the fingers. Trying to achieve that level of delicacy with talons turns out to be impossible.

**Juice**

His eyes widen when he tastes the sweet liquid for the first time, and his fellow warriors laugh at his reaction. They end up in hysterics when he thoughtfully chews the paper cup to gauge the difference in flavor.

**Keep**

Once he had a dream where he was defending a huge castle against nameless invaders. Winning _that,_ at least, had been easy.

**Knit**

Everyone would have been surprised if they knew she showed an aptitude for this. But seriously, the needles were pointy, long and hard; why wouldn't she be good with anything resembling bear claws?

**Lamb **

It bleats pathetically from it's corner in the barn, and he tries to ignore how the sound is so similar to the noise his prey makes before it's killed.

**Land**

She swings herself on the bars, legs and arms moving in tandem, and somersaults gracefully onto the landing mat to the applause of the other students, and fails to feel the thrill she normally does. Then she realizes she misses the feel of a lion breathing down her back, and shakes her head to clear it off the insanity.

**Lend **

By mutual consent, they usually save part of their allowances to give to Ax's (and by extension, Tobias's) book fund. Between that and the constant purchase of footwear, most of them are broke before the end of the month.

**Line**

He stands behind Marco in the lunch line yawning, and spots the girls across the hall sleeping on their feet. Marco sways in front of him before he straightens himself, and he feels vaugely jealous of Ax and Tobias and the proportionately higher amount of sleep they're getting.

**Loop**

Flies were really, really gross; but they _could_ do figure eights like no hawk could.

**Lure**

So he admitted it, sometimes he cheated; if he was feeling particularly lazy, there was nothing like a bait of lettuce to bring the rabbits out.

**Mane**

Maybe, if it weren't for the damned mane, he could have beaten David to pulp in the beginning and saved everyone the anguish and the mental torture.

**Mend**

After him tinkering around with Cassie's radio, the rest of them end up bringing all their malfunctioning little technical toys to him. He mutters about the sheer primitiveness of human contraptions, but nevertheless enjoys modifying the things. The constant requests for innovation reminds him of home, somehow.

**Pie**

When Cassie arrives at the barn with something smelling heavenly, they rush to grab a slice before Ax catches a whiff of it. Not that he wouldn't share, exactly, but eating pie off someone's beaming face would be something of a turn-off.

**Plane**

When she looks into the sky, she'd reminded she can soar. Among all the violence and the killing, it's things like that which keep her feeling like herself.

**Plant **

He considers the hydrangea bush for a moment, then wonders what it might be like to turn into one. Probably nice and safe (if boring) until a goat comes along.

**Pocket**

"We don't have style or class. Okay, I get that part. But come on, let's get some pockets into these things at least; do you have any idea how many sets of keys I've lost so far?"

**Poison**

Everytime they talk about _her_, and he always uses the past tense, he flinches inwardly. He wants to shake him and say he's wrong, that his wife is still out there somewhere batting every day, but that would be _really_ bad for security. So he nods, feeling like one of those damned tragic heroes while he does it.

**Rage **

She notices how small things make her want to _–__really_want to_- _do things to people in her daily life she usually does to yeerks in battle. She's officially scared of herself when a scathing comment by a teacher makes her ponder ripping his head out with blunted grizzly claws.

**Rain**

Homer leaps about happily in the yard, gleefully getting mud over everything. Trying to tell him off doesn't work, and he ends up getting as dirty as him (and later, scolded just as much). But still, being one of the pemalites for a while (at least in spirit) was worth all of it.

**Real**

Her parents rope her into watching a sci-fi movie with big, bug-eyed aliens and spends most of it wondering if there's extraterrestrials exist somewhere out there. She thinks of the blue-furred centaur in their barn and tries not to burst out into hysterical laughter.

**Roof**

He stands on the edge and looks at the ground, nothing separating him from a freefall. This, he thinks offhandly, would have scared him a few years ago.

**Rose**

After he tumbles into a rosebush following a surprise attack by three idiot crows, the thought of the flower being beautiful is replaced by the sheer viciousness of it's thorns. On reflection, it made it the perfect thing to give to Rachel.

**Ruins**

The way he sees it, whenever the thing in his brother's head makes a comment about _us, _some part of his life develops a crack.

**Satin**

She like the weird green fabric, because it's smooth and oh so comfortable. Rachel, on the other hand, takes one look at the shirt and drags her away from the shop to try on something a lot less hideous.

**Shade **

The fact that they actually ended up taking their homework to a tunnel-digging session was just weird. Math, Physics and English were interrupted by Ax's two-hour countdown and the claustrophobic exclamations of whoever was digging at the time. And then there were all the derisive noises Ax was making after peeking into their textbooks, Tobias's comments over people's shoulders, and Marco wondering mid-Dickens if synthesized oatmeal would do the job too.

**Shine**

She walks on to stage with a confident smile, and the Marco wonders out loud exactly how she looks like there's a spotlight on her all the time.

**Side**

She suspected she was going just slightly insane, and she'd _always_ known she was power-hungry. Following the superfast-alien fiasco and the whole Cassie getting kidnapped and tortured thing, though, she figures she's a lot happier letting Jake lead.

**Silver**

The gleam of the Lab table is eerily metallic, and he hates how it reminds him of the pool.

**Sin**

Kill or be killed. Survival of the fittest. The cycle of predator and prey. There were a lot of ways to justify what they were doing, but enjoying the rush of adrenaline as she takes a life probably doesn't come into it.

**Slide**

She slips on wet mud and catches herself by unconsciously growing osprey talons, then realizes how much of her is in tune with the animals flowing in her bloodstream.

**Sneeze**

They learnt the hard way that tigers were excellent silent predators, except when it came to getting their noses tickled.

**Spain **

"All I'm saying is, if we end up in Spain or something this time, I demand to see the Flamenco before we get back."

**Spoon**

He stares at the implement, then tells them that they are very kind trying to help him learn their traditions, but that he would be able to manage better with his human fingers. Following this, Marco looks at the soup bowl and informs him that _that_ was not the point.

**Spy**

He starts humming the James Bond theme as he sneaks around looking for a place where he can morph, and wishes he had a dracon beam or something for accompaniment.

**Stage**

When he's around people who don't know about the whole secret-alien-invasion-of-the-planet thing, he feels like an actor. Not one of the Hollywood superstars (which he should be, by all rights) but one of those struggling, underpaid, overworked types. Superhero life was turning out to be real glamorous.

**Swim**

Okay, so her face was probably as red as his was, but watching Jake squirm after seeing her in a swimsuit did make her feel a little smug. Take that, Allison and Brittany!

**Tea**

The liquid is sweet and bitter at the same time and she makes a face drinking it. Her mother, used to courtroom protests a lot worse than complaints coming from a kid sick with Andalite flu, glares at her till she finishes it.

**Triangle**

The ones who don't know, the ones who know but can't do anything about it, the ones who know and can do something about it; and the last fraction is so pitifully small. He knows he's obliged by senses of decency and survival to _do_ something, but that doesn't mean he likes it.

**Wind**

They soar on blankets of hot air and race each other over the beach. Six birds of prey acting like crazed teenagers.


End file.
